DiggDown: Revision3 Vs. DiggNation Fan

While you were enjoying your weekend, one DiggNation fan was allegedly getting thumped by Revision3’s legal team. The 19 year-old fan calling himself Striker set up a site last year called DiggDown.net (now changed to www.iggdown.net) that allowed viewers to download episodes of DiggNation, a video podcast hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht discussing stories posted on Digg.com.

Revision3 has a subscription model in place that allows viewers to watch the weekly show several days earlier than everyone else, as long as they pay a small fee. Striker’s site allowed viewers to bypass the Revision3 fee by offering the early episodes to all for free download. This weekend that all came to an end when Striker claimed he received the following legal notice from Revision3…

“Your reproduction, distribution, and public performance of our client’s federally protected copyrighted works constitutes multiple counts of copyright infringement. Additionally, your use of the DIGG
marks in your <diggdown.net> domain name and on your website constitutes trademark infringement. It is likely that your use of the
Digg Marks is likely to confuse Internet users as to the sponsorship or affiliation of your services with our client despite your many disclaimers. In order to protect our client’s intellectual property, we must demand that you immediately cease and desist the reproduction, and public performance and display of all audiovisual works owned by
Revision3 Corporation and immediately cease and desist use of all DIGG
Marks, including as part of your domain name and website name.

…if you do not comply with the demands of this letter, we will be forced to seek damages and attorney’s fees…”

In response, Striker posted the following message: “All material i have posted that may have in any way infringed on revision3’s or digg.com’s copyrights have been removed. I cannot afford to fight their lawyers.”

One fan makes a particularly interesting point: “Sorry, but I have a problem with anyone from Rev3 saying that we shouldn’t download it early from [site name removed] when there are probably 10 or more episodes of Alex and Kevin clearly stating they have downloaded and do download stuff illegally…”